


Broken

by TeaRoses



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can fight hard but still lose everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the theme "cold" on a Final Fantasy LiveJournal community.

He had never realized how cold snow was when you weren't playing or fighting, but just lying in it and wishing you could never get up. The cold bit through, taught him the lesson that the rest of this should have taught, that he could not overpower everything.

When he was younger the others only taught him about being the victor. A Ronso won, overpowered his enemies, became a real warrior. In the stories the losers were enemies, or Ronso who deserved punishment, not young Ronso who fought hard, broke claws and teeth on their enemies, but still went down.

Kimahri had always known he was small. He was not like the legendary heroes, who strode among the mountains, or even like the other Ronso he knew, who were just a bit bigger, just a bit stronger. But Kimahri had will and determination and everyone knew that was what really counted, that victory would go to the one who worked hardest for it.

Except it didn't. Biran had been that much faster, that much better trained, and he had won. And Kimahri did not know how to lose. How could he admit that he was small and weak and none of the things a real Ronso needed to be?

So he had refused to admit defeat, and had become more bitter, and Biran more angry. Until today, when Biran had jumped on him from behind and pinned him to the cold ground. Biran had grabbed Kimahri's head and beaten it against the ground as Kimahri struggled. Then he had felt the break, seen the piece of his horn lying on the ground. Biran had run away, then. Kimahri couldn't think of chasing him, not when he was sitting in the snow staring at a part of himself that could never be fixed.

When Kimahri's horn had grown in after the molting, he had been proud, been assured that he had really grown from a child. A horn meant strength, and now his strength was gone and he was nothing. He lifted his hand, touched the jagged edges of the break. How could he get up now? His horn was broken and it was not from a glorious battle but from a final humiliation. There were no stories for this, nothing to tell him how to be the loser and to bear a mark of shame forever.

He looked up at the gray sky and wondered if he could leave, hide his shame in some place where the stories were different and people would not know he was a poor excuse for a Ronso. But either way he would first have to face the truth, and face Biran and the rest of his people. He began to push himself up from the ground. Everything was changed, and he did not know how to go on, but at least he would not lie there in the cold.


End file.
